War of Eagles o-12

by Tom Clancy

  The general took off her uniform, showered quickly, and felt better when that was done. The housekeeper had arrived and let herself in. Patricia Salazar was a young single mother of two who went about her work with easy efficiency. It had occurred to Carrie years before that Patricia would be a perfect spy. She had the run of the house, and who would ever suspect a Portuguese-speaking housekeeper of being an agent for a third party?

  Which was exactly the point. Carrie had her G2 staff run a background check. Although Patricia had been married to an NCO in an army signals regiment seven years before, he had left her — and the children — for another woman. Phone logs were checked, as were travel records. Patricia was watched for several weekends. The Salazars apparently had no contact after Patricia came to Maryland to live with her sister and brother-in-law.

  Carrie had not felt bad about doing that. A clean house — and a happy housecleaner — were not more important than national security. But caution was a part of her profession. The general did not usually discuss work at home and never took sensitive documents to the house. But she did not want to go to work with a bug concealed in the heel of her shoe.

  Carrie poured another cup of tea into a thermos, then glanced at the news on-line before the car arrived. There had been no explosions during the night. That was both good and bad. Good because no one had been hurt. Bad because each new event would give them more information to work with.

  The driver arrived, and Carrie left with two things that were at her side constantly: her laptop and her secure phone. As soon as the general was comfortably settled in the car, she raised the glass partition between the seats and switched on the telephone. She entered the password neurodoc, then punched in 1*. That speed-dialed the cell phone of someone she spoke with almost every day, the man who had helped her rise through the military. The man who had ensured her promotion and made the transfer to Op-Center possible. General Raleigh Carew, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  “You did not call since you started,” Carew said.

  “I was settling in, getting the overview.”

  “And what’s your impression of Op-Center?”

  “Most of the people are dedicated, hardworking, and extremely burned out,” the general informed him.

  “Burned out in what way?”

  “They work long hours, they take their cases home with them, and when they are not involved in a crisis, I’m told they are busy looking for the next one.”

  “Told by whom?”

  “Liz Gordon, the staff psychologist,” Carrie said. “That last factor is the one that’s killing them. There is no downtime.”

  “What’s going on there? The Napoleon syndrome?” Carew asked.

  “I do not get the sense they are trying to compete with the big boys of intelligence,” Carrie told him. “At least, that’s not their primary motivation. It is more like a bunker mentality. They see themselves as a key line of defense — which they are. But according to Liz, Paul Hood made them feel as if they are the only line of defense. His personal line of defense.”

  “Against what?”

  “Mediocrity,” she replied. “Liz thinks that Paul Hood used the NCMC to fix the world in ways that he couldn’t fix his life.”

  “General Carrie.” Carew sighed. “Are you going to sit there and give me a lot of psychobullshit?”

  “Mr. Chairman, I was not the one who brought up the Napoleon syndrome,” Carrie remarked.

  Carew was silent for a moment. “Touché,” he replied. “Go on.”

  “Liz says that the big problem is the way Hood integrated everyone into the crisis management process on every level. Military planning was plugged into tech, intelligence gathering was hot-wired into the political liaison office, legal worked with psychological, everyone handson everywhere. I saw that happening myself around two this morning. I was talking to Herbert and McCaskey, and they were overanalyzing everything they had picked up that day instead of acting on it. The guiding principle is that the team takes risks but not chances.”

  “Everything comes from the brain, not the gut,” Carew said.

  “Exactly,” Carrie said. “Whereas we encourage our intel people to explore from within, these people investigate from without. They started a unit of field agents under Mike Rodgers, but it never worked out. Liz says that Hood couldn’t let go. I discovered that Hood is also one reason that Liz back-doored a recommendation to then-Senator Debenport that Mike Rodgers be the first one downsized. Hood’s number two was burning out big time.”

  “That’s because he’s a soldier, not a bureaucrat. He took the full frontal hits for Op-Center, all of them in the field.”

  “Liz doesn’t think Hood realized the damage he was doing to General Rodgers or to the rest of the staff,” Carrie continued. “If he thought about it at all, he would blame it on being understaffed.”

  “Where was the CIOC in all this?”

  “The Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee didn’t seem to care how Hood ran the organization as long as he got results,” Carrie said. “And he did. Hood was one reason the CIOC felt they could cut his budget. Debenport knew that Hood would make it work. What I don’t understand, though, is if he was so important to the mix, why did President Debenport pull him away?”

  “So Hood could do the same thing for the West Wing that he was doing at the NCMC, pulling together an intelligence community under the direct control of the president,” Carew said. “Debenport knows we want to create a greater structure allied with G2. Hood is his countermove.”

  “And his spy.”

  “What do you mean?” Carew asked.

  “Hood is using personnel from Op-Center on the situation in China.”

  “Of course. The president had to realize Hood would do that,” Carew said. “He would use long-standing relationships to tap Op-Center’s resources and confuse their loyalty.”

  “Liz feels the danger to Op-Center goes deeper than that,” Carrie said. “She says that Hood’s command style not only connected people professionally but emotionally — in a common, often open dislike of Hood. Rodgers, Bob Herbert, attorney Lowell Coffey, and FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey all manifested extreme resentment from time to time. But she thinks that instead of being relieved by his absence they’re feeling lost. These people don’t have a familiar commander — or a place to put their frustration. In the absence of that, Hood can cherrypick the personnel he needs in his new position. Whether intentionally or not, that will divide their loyalty.”

  “Keep us from solidifying the unit.”

  “Right.”

  “Whether or not that’s true, and whether or not this was all Hood’s fault, how long will it take to fix?” Carew asked.

  “I’m going to work on that with Liz today,” Carrie said. “We’re going to see who we can retain and retrain.”

  “Are you sure Liz Gordon was not affected by all this?” Carew asked.

  “Very sure,” Carrie replied. “Hood did not trust profiling or psychology very much. He says as much in his own reports. Liz stayed aloof and apart from much of what went on at Op-Center.”

  “Sounds promising,” Carew said. “Don’t hesitate too long to do whatever is necessary to get the NCMC healthy.”

  “Of course not. China should be a good shakedown cruise for us.”

  “Speaking of which, what’s the latest? G2 has nothing new on the Taiwan front.”

  “I’ll be following up on that when I get to the office,” Carrie said. “If something had happened, the night staff would have let me know.”

  General Carew said he would speak with her later. Carrie hung up and looked out the tinted window. She believed what she was doing was right for Op-Center, for the intelligence community, and for the nation. When Carrie first took over G2, it was an efficient collection of groups that tended to act unilaterally. The overall mission was to collect and disseminate military intelligence and counterintelligence, and to oversee military security and military intelligence trainin
g. After the Iraq War, Carrie had been charged with improving the organization on the tactical level. She planned and supervised a restructuring from battalion through division to allow G2 to effectively execute its mission in war and peace. During peacetime, she arranged it so that operations were centrally consolidated with outflow controlled by her office under the daily control of her number two, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Denny, the assistant chief of staff. In support of war, the intelligence assets were jumped directly to the tactical command post, the main command post, and the rear command post. This dissemination was executed by units Carrie had hand-picked: the 640th Military Intelligence Battalion, the 210th Weather Flight, Air National Guard, the 1004th/1302nd Engineer Detachment, which specialized in terrain analysis, and the Quickfix Platoon C/1-140AV.

  Of course, at G2 Carrie had the entire United States military at her disposal to accomplish that goal. The challenge of Op-Center was to do the same thing with a mostly civilian group and a relatively small budget.

  It was a challenge she was looking forward to. There would probably be some casualties, though she hoped to minimize those with Liz’s help. Burned out was not the same as passed away. This team had done some remarkable work, and she wanted to try to keep them intact.

  The big challenge was not Bob Herbert or Darrell McCaskey or any of their teammates. The big challenge was the goal.

  General Patton had once decried the short-sighted decisions of those “temporary residents of the White House.” International policy and national security were too important to be left to upgraded senators and former governors. The objective of General Carrie was to help strengthen the United States by making military intelligence a bigger and more integral part of America’s defense structure.

  On the way to that goal, however, another challenge suddenly presented itself. One that was smaller but tactically and morally important. According to Liz Gordon, Paul Hood was not burned out. Why would he be? Whatever his flaws, Hood had built and used a strong, hardworking support structure.

  It would be quite an asset, Carrie thought, to have the president’s personal intelligence officer work with the military to achieve their goal. Fortunately, by relying on his old Op-Center personnel, Hood had given her a head start in that direction.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Beijing, China Wednesday, 8:44 P.M.

  Paul Hood stepped into the warm, damp night. There was a clinging mist in the air, and it caused his cell phone to crackle. He could only imagine what kind of pollutants were in the air.

  He stepped away from the canopy to call Rodgers. Hood stood with his back to the reception hall, a finger in his ear to block out the sounds of traffic. The general was in his hotel room having dinner.

  “Chinese food isn’t Chinese food,” Rodgers said. “I’m sitting here eating chicken kidneys and shark fins. What are you doing?”

  “I’m standing outside a reception where I’ve already missed the hors d’oeuvres,” Hood said.

  “That’s probably a good thing,” Rodgers said.

  The repartee was strained. Neither man was very good at this with one another. Hood got to the point. “I spoke with the prime minister. He said that one of us could attend the launch.”

  “You should be the one to go,” Rodgers said.

  “Why?” He had not expected Rodgers to come all this way and surrender that privilege.

  “I’m looking into other aspects of the situation,” Rodgers told him.

  “Is it anything you can talk about?” Hood asked. “Not over this line, I realize, but maybe later—”

  “Maybe later,” Rodgers said with finality.

  That was also unexpected. Rodgers had delivered a clean, unapologetic kick in the teeth.

  “All right then,” Hood said. “I’ll make the arrangements for my visit. I’ll let you know how things progress.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Will you give me a call when you can talk?”

  “Sure,” Rodgers promised.

  Hood flipped the cell phone shut. He stood looking ahead at the oncoming traffic. He could not see the faces of the drivers, but he felt as though every eye was looking at him, laughing at him. He knew they were not, yet he had never felt as exposed and vulnerable as he did at that moment. He had never felt so adrift.

  Since the night that his fiancée Nancy Jo Bosworth had left him standing alone on a street corner, waiting for a movie date that never materialized, he had never felt so alone.

  “The man without a country,” he muttered.

  “Edward Everett Hale,” came a soft voice from behind him.

  Hood snapped around. Anita was standing there. She was holding a Coke and smiling. At least one of them was for him.

  “Thank you,” Hood said as he took the glass.

  “Philip Nolan, an American exiled for treason,” the woman went on. “Is that why you are here? Are you in exile?”

  “Are you referring to here being outside or here being Beijing?” Hood asked. He took a sip of cola. There was no ice.

  “Let’s take outside first.” She smiled.

  There was no ice in Anita now, either. Hood was suspicious, though he liked it better on her than he did in the warm beverage.

  “I came out to make a call,” he said, holding up the phone.

  “Professional?”

  He nodded.

  “So you feel exiled in Beijing, then,” Anita said.

  “Not really,” Hood told her.

  Anita’s big, open forehead crinkled. “I’m confused.”

  Hood smiled. “Me, too.”

  “But you said—”

  “It was just a reverie,” Hood said.

  “Not a lament?”

  Hood smiled. She was perceptive. But then, an interpreter would have to be. Many translations depended upon nuance, not just the literal words.

  “Whatever it was, it’s passed,” Hood lied. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Accept my apology,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For coming on a little strong earlier,” Anita said. “I am sure you are under a great deal of pressure here. I should not have added to it.”

  “You did not upset me,” Hood assured her. “To the contrary. I was sorry the Asian stereotypes upset you. There is no defending them.”

  “Time and perception change, and culture changes with them,” she said. “It is both fortunate and unfortunate that the works themselves survive. Unfortunate in that the stereotypes survive. Fortunate in that we can measure how much more enlightened we have become.”

  “That is true,” Hood said. He glanced back at the canopy. “We should go back. We are probably missing your father’s toast.”

  “Do you really want to hear it?”

  “That’s a loaded question,” Hood said.

  “Answer it truthfully.” She smiled.

  “I want to show respect for the man and his position.”

  “A perfect diplomatic response.” She laughed. “You do your president honor.”

  “Thank you,” Hood said. “But before we go back, I would like to ask you something.”

  “Certainly.”

  “You don’t have to answer, if you think the question is out of line.”

  “Lao-tzu once said, ‘There is no such thing as a stupid question. Only stupid answers.’ ”

  “True enough.” Hood smiled. “I’m wondering what caused your attitude toward me to change.”

  “May I answer freely?”

  “Of course,” Hood said.

  “You spoke to my father with great deference,” she replied. “You did not fawn or bluster the way other ambassadors do. In fact, you did not even act like someone from an embassy.”

  “Diplomats have a job to do.”

  “As I said, you do it differently.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Hood’s radar had picked up the blip. He had only sensed it a moment before, when she first complimented his manner, but now it was big and green a
nd closing in. Anita had come out here to find out what exactly he was doing in China.

  He offered her his arm. “Shall we go back inside?”

  “I was thinking a walk might be nice.”

  “All right,” Hood agreed. He continued to offer his arm. She took it with a smile. Now he knew Anita was playing him.

  The woman was obviously inexperienced at this. But Hood would play along. He was certain that her father had sent her to talk with him. The prime minister might be angry or insulted if Hood brought her back too quickly. Even though it could hurt the launch, he might withdraw permission for someone to attend. However, if Hood and Anita stayed out for a short while, the prime minister might shift the failure of this maneuver from Hood to his daughter’s inexperience.

  “I wonder. Did you ever think of writing a novel?” Anita asked.

  “No.” Hood laughed. “I would be too self-conscious.”

  “Why?”

  “When I was a kid, I read Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island,” Hood told her. “When my parents weren’t looking, I read the James Bond stories. I loved them. Then I found out that Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson and Ian Fleming made them up. They didn’t happen. There was no Huck Finn or Long John Silver. That really upset me. Not because they weren’t real, but because someone sat down and spent all that time to lie to me.”

  “You felt betrayed?” Anita asked.

  “Betrayed, cheated, and stupid,” Hood said. “Assuming I had the time and patience to write a novel, I think I would be distracted by the fact that I was lying to thousands and thousands of people.”

  Anita laughed. “You are aligned with Confucius.”

  “How so?”

  “He did not like novels or novelists,” Anita replied. “He felt they were on the low end of society, the opposite of truth and honor. Fiction writers started with a lie and went from there. I maintain that fiction is an internal search for truth that the artist shares.”